Maximilian
Lifer
I noticed on my A64 that it had MMX and SSE, both devised by Intel, yet i was reading an article and i saw a pic of a pentium 4 3.6ghz on CPU-Z and it didnt have the 3Dnow! instuction set. Why not? Wouldnt it benefit from having it?
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Why dosent the pentium 4 have 3Dnow! ?
- Thread starter Maximilian
- Start date
I really don't know if 3dnow or 3dnow professional are used all that often. I think SSE, SSE2, SSE3 are use much more. It usually takes inline assembly to take advantage of it so a lot of programmers don't even bother with it unless they are doing really high end stuff like games or video encoding.
Maximilian
Lifer
So its pretty useless then, ok. I had the idea that the age of an instruction set would determine its usefullness, as more programs would adapt to use the set.
BTW, why is your name pabster? Thats nearly the same as the guy that runs toms hardware, "Thomas Pabst" Are you the same person? 😱
BTW, why is your name pabster? Thats nearly the same as the guy that runs toms hardware, "Thomas Pabst" Are you the same person? 😱
It was only really created to compensate for the poor FPU performance on the K6-2 and K6-III processors in games. With the release of the superior K7 Athlon architecture, it really wasn't needed anymore. Plus you could probably count the number of apps that supported it with one hand.
Because Intel is king of the hill (in volume of processors sold into the market) technologies that aren't included in its CPU's and included in AMD chips are very rarely used within the industry. The reasoning behind this is simple, if you are to write a game (as an example) with 80% (if not more) of your customer base having CPU's with SSE2/SSE3 then you do not spend days optimizing code for 3DNow as few will benefit and the saying goes time is money, business has no sweethearts. SSE1-2-3 is what matters in this day and age, even MMX has been forgotten (probably due most to its operations being limited to integer only).
So Intel doesn't need 3DNow but AMD needs SSE3 and just recently it finally got it within the latest batch of Athlon/FX chips coming out of Dresben Fab 30.
I disagree with you here. Just look at the numbers Valve provided though Steam. The market was split almost down the middle between AMD and Intel. Sure Intel may have a huge lead in overall market share, but to gamers which these people are aiming for AMD has a much more competitive market share. I agree with a prior post, 3DNOW was produced to make up for a poor FPU in the K6 processers. AMD has now gone on to take the lead in FP performance. Thus, 3DNow is just not needed to produced the results that game makers are looking for.
PKing
Valve is not representative of the volume of Intel and AMD chips that are sold into the market. You're bringing to surface the topic of the experienced user that rather builds their own PC than buys from an OEM. While these people exist they are a much smaller market than the mass consumer market. So long as Intel has the upper hand in volume of shipments thus technology penetration down the ladder to consumers will games be optimized for its own processors and these technologies incorporated into them.
It's not only a games issue anyhow, SSE1,2,3 is ever more present in video/audio apps.
To put a long story short it's non feasible to optmize for 3DNow when a) the number of chips supporting this out there are way fewer and b) SSE has already become a widely used standard. As a result of the latter AMD has been adding SSE addition to its revisions instead of pressing hard on developers to prefer 3DNow. Unless AMD ever grows in size to be a heavyweight player then this is how things will unfold.
AMD's biggest problem and lack of management in my opinion surrounds a) now having its own chipsets and b) not giving developers the support Intel does in programming code for their architectures. Intel is leap years ahead of AMD in this aspect and this reason is probably why SSE was always bound to be the defacto standard. AMD has much less money than Intel true but it's not promoting its CPU to developers and while at present they don't need apps to be fine tuned to their CPU's things will be so different once Intel starts pumping Pentium M's in dual core variants.
StrangerGuy
Diamond Member
Intel doesn't like to use AMD tech unless it is something like as x86-64.
Are you joking? Valve is very representative of the gaming market. 3DNow was made to help AMD compete with intel in games. Now that AMD beats intel using intels own standard there is no point for software companies to waste resources on 3DNow code. Why should they? Intel is struggleing enough as it is..... I really do not see what intel having its own chipset has anything to do with it. AMD not producing there own chipset has lead to a much longer life of the 939 boards. A 939 board can go from a 3000+ to projected 5000+ X2. That is huge upgrade. Intel makes you buy a new motherboard with every new processer. Which one of the 5000 billion chipsets do you have?
I also disagree with you saying that AMD should push developers do use 3DNow. Again this type of buisness having a common point is an asset. You can make the same argument about how Intel has adapted AMD's 64bit set (well bought the rights to use). It is a bad buisness choice to have competing technologies that do the same thing. Remember Beta and VHS? How about the HD-DVD vs Blueray battle that is going on now? Besides AMD is beating Intel at its own game now. Why do they need to push 3DNow when they are already the best?
PKing
Some clarification.
a) The chipset has nothing to do with it, I stated - perhaps wrongly as a sidetopic - that AMD not producing its own chipsets makes them less viable. As a sidetopic I didn't expand is why the confusion I guess. AMD having its own chipset would push business sales because workstation, PC or server when a company buys 50, 100 or 1000 computers each 3-4 years they like to know the platform is ironed out and realiable. How many Intel CPU machines with VIA or SIS chipsets do you find in businesses? Very few, Intel CPU + Intel chipset = a marriage bound to last for the 3-4 years lifetime of the given machine. Plus you don't have to be an office worker to appreciate an Intel CPU, overclockers galore will confirm best overclocking is attained with an Intel chipset. The bottom line is this, if AMD designed matching chipsets for its CPU's it would gain respect in OEM's and businesses as an alternative to Intel.
It's like people constantly nagging at why Dell doesn' offer AMD chips. The reasons are simple and it's not to do with secret paychecks from Intel but a) AMD couldn't even produce enough CPU's to fulfill orders by Dell and b) Dell would have to manage chipset compatibility/issues for AMD chips when it's AMD who should be doing this. When you buy a product from someone (even as a consumer) you're not expected to perform your own QA on it, you just expect it to be well made and made to work without any glitches. VIA and SIS are known for the odd bug affecting the use of certain hardware. Nvidia could be an option I guess to some extent. AMD is not offering a complete package, it depends too much on 3rd parties to make their CPU's operational on motherboards and because it's a dependable company it's deemed less sturdy to do business with on a grand scale. How on earth is AMD's reputation going to shift up if users keep running into various problems not because their Athlon 64/FX/Sempron is to blame but the chipset. No average user knows it's usually the chipset to blame so of course they'll think AMD is to blame. AMD is not helping itself by calling its Athlon's great and not being able to back it up with a solid platform (thus chipset) to run it on.
b) I didn't say AMD should push developers to optimize for 3DNow. All I said was that it's not doing enough to provide the tools and information to these people in the way Intel is. The resources are just limited. AMD has a great product on their hands but their marketing is dismal, they should take a leaf out of not only Intel's book but someone like Nokia whose marketing is near perfect.
Business sales are completely diffrent then the gaming market, and the gaming market is what 3DNow is for. You are supporting your argument with a segment of the market that has nothing to do with game development. Do you think companies are hosting massive lan parities at work? This is why the data from valve is so important, it shows the very market segment that this discussion is about. As far as stablity, where is the problem with AMD platform in the PC market. Server markets are very diffrent and have nothing to do with anything we are talking about.
As far as reputation, how on earth do you explain the very positive word of mouth reputation of AMD if they are having such problems with chipsets? This is simply just not the case, and the fact that about half of all HL2 players that participated in that poll are using AMD systems says a hell of a lot. As for overclockin, are you on crack? First, no buisness is going to OC there servers or company computers. I say that because you frame the OCing argument in the discussion of buisness computers. Perhaps this is not what you ment, but if not that would just lead me to my second point. How can you say intel makes good OCing chips when there best chipsets have really bad thermal issues right now. I should save money on my heating bill this winter and buy a intel........ That will change late next year, but as of right now Intel has droped the ball on this.
I would not go so far to say that AMD has bad marketing team. Remember there is a lawsuit out right now, and there is more then just speculation about intels bad buisness tactics. Intel did not even try to fight it in Japan (I believe it was japan) and is having issues in other parts of asia as well as the EU and the US. I would suggest prudence to see how this turns out before blaiming AMD for the lack of sales..
3DNow was directed to the gaming market. Not the server market, not the buisness market. The one issues I have wondered about AMD is the company never made a compiler like intel does. However, that was a problem in the old days (ah fond memorys of my K-6) because it does not matter right now. AMD chips out perform Intel chips hands down, why do they need to put money in a compiler? Have you seen the new SUN ad campain against dell. SUN is using AMD chips with there servers which destroy anything intel has to offer at this time. Dell will take a hit. But that is off topic and a diffrent market.
PKing
Pentium4 does have 3DNow!. It's called SSE, was introduced with the P-III and differs in some details, but serves the the very same purpose. AMD could then expand their 3DNow to support SSE, which they did, which I would assume non-game software developers would have taken as an invitation to program for one target.
3DNow!/SSE goes much further than "compensating for poor FPU performance". And actually, the K6 had 'faster' FPU than the PentiumII. The difference was that the Pentium's FPU was pipelined. Which meant that it handled a succession of non-dependant FP operations faster. As happens to be the case with FPU benchmarks, ...and the matrix operations of 3D transformations.
I believe however, that those days' versions of POVray ran faster on the K6 (at least that's what I've heard). As for FP benchmarks in those days, they were often simply misguiding people about the suitability of the K6 for FP applications.
Then K7 got pipelined FP units, and that discussion got old.
MMX has nothing to do with this.
Chipsets have nothing to do with this.
SSE2 is another major extension, that becomes wider to take advantage of increased hardware FP resources. AMD took their time to implement this, which meant that AMD for long suffered on encoding apps that took advantage of SSE2, but didn't bother much with 3DNow!.
SSE3 is a rather minor, almost insignificant addition, and cannot be compared in scope with the previous MMX, SSE and SSE2 extensions. I'm tempted to suspect it's just a desperate attempt from Intel to implement some benchmark upmanship. In the criminal tradition of Microsoft, "extend and exclude".
AMD's architectures have tended to be much more 'generally' fast and tolerant of previous code styles. While Intel have required lots of special tweaks and optimizations to get code running fast on new architectures. That has worked out fine for Intel on synthetic benchmarks, but has also forced Intel take an active role in applying pressure on coders to optimize for the latest Intel cludge.
How insidious and destructive this activity really is, and what purpose it actually serves, is maybe realized when contemplating Intel's compiler which apparently intentionally sabotages the code's performance on AMD.
Intel's purpose is simply to use their market lead to 'exclude' AMD. There were never any possibility of Intel supporting 3DNow!. It was not because they didn't have any use for it, as wrongly suggested previously in this thread. It was because it had to be 'something else'. To exclude AMD for a while. That else became SSE. AMD is put into a disadvantage by having to follow the market leader. That disadvantage becomes increased by AMD's more limited resources.
I'm sure Intel were thinking very long and hard about what they could do with EM64T to f' up things. ...And we may not have heard the last thing about that.
I don't really have any real insight into the hardcore PC-gaming and enthusiast market. But a couple of component retailers that I'm aquainted with, hardly even bothers with stocking Intel CPUs and MBs anymore. Noone "in the know" buys Intel any longer. I would thus presume that serious game developers do indeed optimize for AMD, since that seems to be a viable market. But there is no point in pushing '3DNow!'. MMX/SSE/SSE2 is obviously the way forward.
3DNow!/SSE goes much further than "compensating for poor FPU performance". And actually, the K6 had 'faster' FPU than the PentiumII. The difference was that the Pentium's FPU was pipelined. Which meant that it handled a succession of non-dependant FP operations faster. As happens to be the case with FPU benchmarks, ...and the matrix operations of 3D transformations.
I believe however, that those days' versions of POVray ran faster on the K6 (at least that's what I've heard). As for FP benchmarks in those days, they were often simply misguiding people about the suitability of the K6 for FP applications.
Then K7 got pipelined FP units, and that discussion got old.
MMX has nothing to do with this.
Chipsets have nothing to do with this.
SSE2 is another major extension, that becomes wider to take advantage of increased hardware FP resources. AMD took their time to implement this, which meant that AMD for long suffered on encoding apps that took advantage of SSE2, but didn't bother much with 3DNow!.
SSE3 is a rather minor, almost insignificant addition, and cannot be compared in scope with the previous MMX, SSE and SSE2 extensions. I'm tempted to suspect it's just a desperate attempt from Intel to implement some benchmark upmanship. In the criminal tradition of Microsoft, "extend and exclude".
AMD's architectures have tended to be much more 'generally' fast and tolerant of previous code styles. While Intel have required lots of special tweaks and optimizations to get code running fast on new architectures. That has worked out fine for Intel on synthetic benchmarks, but has also forced Intel take an active role in applying pressure on coders to optimize for the latest Intel cludge.
How insidious and destructive this activity really is, and what purpose it actually serves, is maybe realized when contemplating Intel's compiler which apparently intentionally sabotages the code's performance on AMD.
Intel's purpose is simply to use their market lead to 'exclude' AMD. There were never any possibility of Intel supporting 3DNow!. It was not because they didn't have any use for it, as wrongly suggested previously in this thread. It was because it had to be 'something else'. To exclude AMD for a while. That else became SSE. AMD is put into a disadvantage by having to follow the market leader. That disadvantage becomes increased by AMD's more limited resources.
I'm sure Intel were thinking very long and hard about what they could do with EM64T to f' up things. ...And we may not have heard the last thing about that.
I don't really have any real insight into the hardcore PC-gaming and enthusiast market. But a couple of component retailers that I'm aquainted with, hardly even bothers with stocking Intel CPUs and MBs anymore. Noone "in the know" buys Intel any longer. I would thus presume that serious game developers do indeed optimize for AMD, since that seems to be a viable market. But there is no point in pushing '3DNow!'. MMX/SSE/SSE2 is obviously the way forward.
DarkKnight69
Golden Member
1. Intel is not struggling at all, they make 10x the sales that AMD does! Link1 Link2
2. the chipset thing is good and bad. I would rather have a chipset optimizes for a cpu (IE. I would but an 865 or 875 ANY day over an nF3) but the fact that you need to upgrade everytime is annoying as hell!!!
3. AMD could easily drop 3dnow since they obviously beat intel with intels technology.
DarkKnight69
Golden Member
fair enough!
DarkKnight69
Golden Member
it is optimized for a range of CPU's, not a specific cpu or 2.
not only that but it ranges over 2 sockets!
not only that but it ranges over 2 sockets!
Wow, short memories.
3Dnow was started buy Nexgen (who was purchased by AMD) Nexgen started this development do to lack of a MMX License from Intel. AMDs failure with their K5 put them into a bind, they needed a new chip fast. They Purchased Nexgen, and had them kill off this floating point optimizer. AMD did this so they could use that room for MMX (since they have always had a cross license agreement). The chip was later released as the K6, but the development continued with the FPU optimizer which was later called 3Dnow, this came in the nick of time because PIIs where starting to cost less and Celerons where now competitive. Do to the Cross License agreements Intel could now release the same thing, they then named this SSE and released it with the PIII. These helped games like no other.
AMD later released The Athlon, and along with it 3Dnow Professional. This was supposed to be really useful for encoding and CAD programs. The Problem with this was the lack of companies that would actually update or write a program for this. The Athlon had not picked up steam and no one and I mean no one from the bussiness world was using them. For this reason there was no reason to doe for it at all. Intel then releases SSE2. This was again a direct copy of AMDs 3Dnow (again cross License). When AMD release the Palmino version of the Athlon AMD both made sure they got their sure their CPUs got the performance boost they deserved but also set in motion the death of 3Dnow by including SSE in their CPU. By doing this there was no reason to Include 3Dnow for their games as all new AMD cpus would be able to use the same code as Intels.
The reason SSE3 improved performance less then any other SSE stems from the fact that it was the only true devopment Intel has placed into the SIMD since MMX. Intel has even when taking AMDs developments always changed there name and for 3Dnow AMD had to choose either low adoption or surrender and kill it off. Luckily for wether Intel uses AMD64 (hahaha) or EMT64 it doesn't matter to us.
3Dnow was started buy Nexgen (who was purchased by AMD) Nexgen started this development do to lack of a MMX License from Intel. AMDs failure with their K5 put them into a bind, they needed a new chip fast. They Purchased Nexgen, and had them kill off this floating point optimizer. AMD did this so they could use that room for MMX (since they have always had a cross license agreement). The chip was later released as the K6, but the development continued with the FPU optimizer which was later called 3Dnow, this came in the nick of time because PIIs where starting to cost less and Celerons where now competitive. Do to the Cross License agreements Intel could now release the same thing, they then named this SSE and released it with the PIII. These helped games like no other.
AMD later released The Athlon, and along with it 3Dnow Professional. This was supposed to be really useful for encoding and CAD programs. The Problem with this was the lack of companies that would actually update or write a program for this. The Athlon had not picked up steam and no one and I mean no one from the bussiness world was using them. For this reason there was no reason to doe for it at all. Intel then releases SSE2. This was again a direct copy of AMDs 3Dnow (again cross License). When AMD release the Palmino version of the Athlon AMD both made sure they got their sure their CPUs got the performance boost they deserved but also set in motion the death of 3Dnow by including SSE in their CPU. By doing this there was no reason to Include 3Dnow for their games as all new AMD cpus would be able to use the same code as Intels.
The reason SSE3 improved performance less then any other SSE stems from the fact that it was the only true devopment Intel has placed into the SIMD since MMX. Intel has even when taking AMDs developments always changed there name and for 3Dnow AMD had to choose either low adoption or surrender and kill it off. Luckily for wether Intel uses AMD64 (hahaha) or EMT64 it doesn't matter to us.
Maximilian
Lifer
Its not really the same thing, it just does similar tasks. Your making it sound like Intel stole it off AMD 😛 An athlon XP and a pentium 4 do similar tasks, they are both radically different.
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